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Canadian Tire to build huge warehouse in Caledon under ministerial zoning order

Caledon residents fighting to stop a massive Canadian Tire distribution centre on 73 hectares were shocked after the province stepped in and issued a rare order allowing construction to begin immediately.

“The Liberal government hasn’t learned from the gas plant scandal,” said Sandra Clarke-Forester, one of more than 1,000 residents who signed a petition against the distribution centre, which will bring jobs but also substantially increase truck traffic on Highway 50.

She accuses Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Linda Jeffrey of issuing a “minister’s zoning order” to protect Liberal seats, including hers. Canadian Tire currently employs about 800 people at a warehouse in Brampton, and there were fears the company would relocate the jobs to Quebec if it wasn’t allowed to move its expanding operations to the more spacious location.

Jeffrey, who represents Brampton-Springdale, did not respond to request for comment. But her office issued a statement saying that, “By helping this centre relocate, we will help retain over 1,000 jobs and create up to 460 jobs in the Region of Peel.”

Caledon Mayor Marolyn Morrison said her council, with the support of Peel Region council, asked for the special order to keep Canadian Tire from moving its Brampton facility outside of the region. Usually, zoning issues are the jurisdiction of municipal and regional governments, not the province.

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Bob Chiarelli, the former municipal affairs minister, asked a provincial facilitator to step in and work with Caledon on the issue in January. The town and region requested the order in June so the company could start construction this year.

“Canadian Tire had told us that they bought enough land in Montreal to do their central Canadian facility there. They had other options. That’s 800 jobs lost in the Region of Peel,” Morrison said.

Workers at the Brampton plant, which will close when the new site opens, will be bused to the new site on the southern edge of Bolton.

But residents in the area say they don’t want 800 trucks travelling up and down Highway 50 seven days a week and around the clock.

“At the end of the day it’s a David and Goliath story,” said Annette Groves, a former Caledon councillor who ran against Morrison in 2010.

She wants to see more residential growth to support dying commercial ventures in Bolton, where scores of businesses have closed in recent years.

Groves says she’s also in favour of commercial development, “but not the type of low-wage, warehouse industry that Caledon council wants, to keep employment numbers low without bringing in new residents, because they can just bus in workers from Brampton.”

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Groves says she is shocked that the overwhelming will of residents has been ignored through the means of a ministerial order.

Residents said more than 200 people turned out to public meetings on the issue, almost all of them opposed to the distribution centre.

Critics have said the Canadian Tire facility, which could employ about 1,200 people, is an attempt to block residential growth and the type of suburban development Brampton has seen over the past two decades as its demographics have shifted.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Morrison said. “I think Caledon is becoming very multicultural. Diversity in life is very important. It doesn’t matter what colour your skin is, we’re all the same.”

She insists the request for a zoning order was about jobs and protecting the vision for Caledon’s planned growth, which includes employers like the Canadian Tire distribution centre, not a proposed development in south Bolton to house 20,000 residents.

“They could start breaking ground today if they wanted. People in Caledon do not want wall-to-wall houses. We are not going to be planned by developers.”

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